Sunday, April 27, 2014

Don't Give Answers to Questions Nobody is Asking: Church Planting in the 21st Century

The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada have announced a
campaign to increase their membership to 350,000 in 1,500 churches by 2020. (In
2009 they had 234,385 members in 1,077 affiliated churches.) Their ambitious
goal reminded me of a column I wrote in The Mennonite back in 2010 about church
planting—and how, according to veteran British church planter Stuart Murray, it
has to be done differently today if evangelism is to be successful at all.

In 1992, churches in Great Britain launched a plan to
plant 20,000 new churches by 2000.

There was some success; several hundred new churches did
result. But it was not the thousands that were hoped for. Of those churches
that were planted, many struggled and some closed after a few years. Others
persisted, but did not thrive. Few inroads were made into the communities they
wanted to serve.

"I think the main problem was that people focused on
speed and quantity rather than quality,” says Murray, who helps direct the
Anabaptist Network in Great Britain.

“We were more interested in how many
churches we could plant, not what kind of church various communities needed.”

Church planting "isn't just about numbers," he
says. "It's about the renewal of the church and the development of new
ways of being the church that are biblically rooted and contextually
appropriate."

Not all church plants will succeed, he points out. But
whether they grow or fail, "there are lessons to be learned."

One of those lessons is that Christianity has to be
presented differently today.

"In the past, we could assume that people we wanted
to reach with the gospel knew the story," he says.

"But we cannot
make such an assumption today. Here in Britain, the cut-off point for knowing
the Christian story is about 35 or 40 years of age. I assume that something
similar might be occurring in parts of North America."

Another lesson, he notes, is that living faithfully—in
the hope that others will notice and then want to know more about Jesus—only
works if people are familiar with the Christian story.

"Many church leaders in Europe and North
America have told me their members are more comfortable living faithfully and
distinctively in the hope that others will be challenged by their example and
drawn toward faith," he says.

"While there is much in this that I affirm, living
out faith only works where people actually know what that faith is actually all
about."

A third lesson for church planters is the importance of
discovering "what aspects of the gospel connect with people today,"
he adds.

For a long time "evangelists used guilt and death to
connect with people, with forgiveness and the hope of eternal life as the good
news,” he says.

“But many people today don't feel guilty, and many are not
particularly interested in life after death. It's no longer a starting point
for a conversation about faith."

For Murray, starting points that might work for
conversations about faith today include alienation, loneliness, a search for
meaning and purpose, interest in spirituality, and ways to live meaningfully
and with purpose in this life.

"The gospel can meet all human needs, but we need to
listen carefully to our post-modern and post-Christendom culture to learn what
they are," he says.

"We don’t want to give out answers to questions
nobody is asking."

As an Anabaptist, Murray believes that tradition brings a
special gift to the church planting enterprise.

"Anabaptism has historically emphasized the
importance of telling the story, of community and the centrality of Jesus,
along with the importance of following Christ in life," he
shares.

"Many people today want to know how they can make a difference and
be fulfilled in this life—not just in the life to come. The Anabaptist emphasis
on service and living the life of faith may prove to be an effective starting
point."